Armenia

Armenia ranked 50th of 180 countries in the 2026 RSF World Press Freedom Index, with a score of 67.02. It fell sixteen positions and 6.94 points from 34th and 73.96 in 2025. The longer trajectory was uneven: Armenia ranked 51st in 2022, 49th in 2023, 43rd in 2024 and 34th in 2025 before the fall in 2026.

Reporters Without Borders describes a polarised media landscape facing an unprecedented level of disinformation and hate speech, driven by domestic political tension, security problems at Armenia’s borders and the country’s position between Russia and the European Union. It says only a handful of outlets demonstrate independence, naming RFE/RL’s Armenian service Azatutyun among them, and reports that state-owned media refrain from criticising the Government.

State Media Monitor maps three entries in Armenia. All are classified State-Controlled, and none sits in the independent family.

The Public Television Company of Armenia, known as First Channel or H1, operates the domestic First Channel and First News services, the international First Channel International and First Channel America services, and the New Channel digital platform. The Public Radio Company of Armenia operates four domestic services: the nationwide First Programme and the Yerevan-area Im Radio, Arevik and Vem services. It produces audio and textual content in twelve languages in all. Armenpress is the state news agency and publishes in ten languages.

The governance arrangement divides the three. The two broadcasters are closed joint-stock companies wholly owned by the Republic of Armenia and managed by the Public Broadcaster’s Council under the Law on Audiovisual Media. Armenpress sits outside that structure.

The Council framework contains substantive procedural safeguards. It has seven members, each serving a six-year term. A five-member temporary commission formed by the audiovisual regulator conducts a competition and selects a single successful candidate for each vacancy. The Prime Minister is the formal appointing authority but must appoint the selected candidate within three days. Members may be removed early only on grounds specified by law, and the Council elects its own chair by secret ballot for a four-year term.

The Council approves the broadcasters’ statutes, programming policies and journalistic code; conducts competitions for their executive directors; commissions an independent annual audit; and submits an annual programming and financial report to the National Assembly. The law also provides that annual financing for the public broadcasters may not fall below the previous year’s level unless state expenditure is reduced proportionately.

These arrangements limit, but do not eliminate, political influence. The Prime Minister remains the formal appointing authority for every Council member, while the temporary selection commission is constituted by another state institution. The Council itself appoints the executive directors and controls the broadcasters’ organisational and programming frameworks.

Armenpress is governed differently but with more direct executive involvement. The agency is wholly state-owned, and the state’s shareholder rights are exercised by representatives linked to the executive, including the Prime Minister’s Office. Its Director is selected through a competition and formally appointed by the meeting of those representatives. Armenpress has no equivalent of the Council’s fixed terms, parliamentary reporting structure or statutory public-service programming obligations.

The audiovisual regulator is legally constituted as an independent state body and may monitor public broadcasters. Its enforcement authority is nevertheless incomplete: during the 2026 parliamentary election, OSCE/ODIHR reported that it lacked authority to impose sanctions on public broadcasters for breaches identified through campaign monitoring.

The public broadcasting group has contracted. A 2025 legislative amendment reduced the statutory minimum number of public broadcasters from three to two. The Government decided to liquidate the Spiritual-Cultural Public Television Company, and its agreement for carriage through the public multiplex ended on 1 January 2026. Shoghakat consequently ceased nationwide terrestrial digital transmission on that date, according to the Television and Radio Broadcasting Network of Armenia.

Financing differs in scale and composition. Armenia’s 2026 budget provides AMD 8.28519 billion for the Public Broadcaster’s Council and the public broadcasting system, AMD 88.905 million less than in 2025.

The Public Television Company reported total revenue of AMD 6.954 billion in 2024. Advertising and sponsorship accounted for 10.9 per cent, and the company recorded an operating loss of AMD 222.4 million. The Public Radio Company reported revenue of AMD 923.855 million, of which advertising represented 1.3 per cent, and a loss of AMD 57.034 million. In June 2026 the Government approved a further AMD 198.6 million for Public Radio’s technical modernisation.

Armenpress’s 2025 financial statements reported AMD 231.943 million in grants, AMD 38.960 million in operating revenue and AMD 6.3 million in assets received free of charge. Grants therefore represented approximately 83.7 per cent of those three positive income lines. The agency also reported advertising income, but state grants remained its dominant disclosed source.

Formal statutory protections exist across the three entries. The Law on Audiovisual Media prohibits unlawful interference in public broadcasters’ activities and requires their programming to uphold objectivity, impartiality, pluralism and diversity. Article 3 of the Law on Mass Media includes news-agency bulletins and qualifying internet publications within the definition of mass media. Article 4 prohibits censorship, coercion and obstruction of lawful journalistic activity, while Article 12 requires media outlets to publish an annual financial report by 31 March. Armenpress publishes its financial statements pursuant to that framework.

Evidence concerning editorial practice differs across the three entries.

The clearest current evidence concerns Public Television. The OSCE/ODIHR preliminary findings on the parliamentary election of 7 June 2026 found that First Channel provided every contestant with 90 minutes of free prime-time airtime and organised three debates open to all contestants. Its monitored newscasts nevertheless displayed clear bias in favour of the ruling Civil Contract party and covered leading opposition contestants predominantly negatively. Civil Contract received 14 per cent of monitored political coverage, predominantly positive; Strong Armenia received 17 per cent, Armenia Alliance 11 per cent and Prosperous Armenia 9 per cent, with their coverage mainly negative. Not every contestant participated in the debates.

State Media Monitor’s content analyses of Public Radio in March 2023, June 2024 and March 2025 indicated a drift towards government alignment, with official visits and government activity increasingly reported without critical distance. No independent monitoring of the radio company’s own output during the 2026 campaign was identified, and the ODIHR television findings are not attributed to it.

No comparable content monitoring was identified for Armenpress during the election. Its classification rests on its direct state ownership and governance, predominantly grant-based financing, official agency function and absence of institutional protections comparable to those applying to the public broadcasters. Outlet-specific content monitoring would strengthen the evidence concerning its editorial practice.

Pressure on the wider media sector intensified during the review period. A monitoring report by the Justice for Journalists Foundation and Armenia’s Committee to Protect Freedom of Expression documented 230 attacks or threats against media workers and outlets during 2025, of which 128 were attributed to representatives of the authorities.

At 31 December 2025 Armenia appeared for the first time among the states listed in the Council of Europe Platform’s annual report as holding journalists or other media actors in detention. That finding followed the pre-trial detention of Imnemnimi podcast hosts Vazgen Saghatelyan and Narek Samsonyan. Both were subsequently released from custodial detention under restrictive non-custodial measures during 2026.

In May 2025 the Justice Ministry circulated draft amendments that would require online media to remove material deemed insulting or defamatory, including reader comments beneath social-media posts. The proposal had not been approved by the Government when reported, and the current consolidated Law on Mass Media does not contain that removal obligation. It is therefore a proposal rather than an enacted restriction.

During the 2026 election campaign, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan asserted that Armenian media were free of government control or influence. He also predicted that journalists would lose their jobs within hours if he ceased to be prime minister and urged them to support the ruling party. RSF’s subsequent finding that state-owned media refrain from criticising the Government was reported as contradicting that assertion.

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